By this comrade-training, the officers were placed in a position such as they had never had in any nation. It is true that all the faults of a privileged order were strikingly perceptible in them. Besides their coarseness, love of drinking and gluttony, the rage for duelling, the old passion of the German army, was not eradicated, although the same Hohenzollern, who had himself wished to fight with his Major, was inexorable in punishing with death every officer who killed another in a duel. But if such a "brave fellow" saved himself by flight, the King rejoiced if other governments promoted him. The duel was not then carried on in Prussia according to the usages of the Thirty Years' War: there were more seconds, and the number of passages was fixed; they fought on horseback with pistols and on foot with a sword. Before the combat the opponents shook hands--nay, they embraced each other, and exchanged forgiveness in case of death; if they were pious they went beforehand to confession and the Lord's Supper; no blow could be given till the opponent was in a position to use his sword; in case he fell to the ground or was disarmed, generosity was a duty; if anyone wished for a fatal result, he spread out his mantle, or, if like the officers after 1710 he wore none, he traced with his sword on the ground a square grave. After the reconciliation followed a banquet. Frequent and unpunished was the presumption of the officers toward the civilian officials, and brutal violence against the weak. Even the sensitiveness of officers for their honour, which then developed itself in the Prussian army, had no high moral authority; it was a very imperfect substitute for manly virtue, for it pardoned great vices and privileged meannesses. But it was an important step in advance for thousands of wild disorderly men. Through it, was first brought forth in the Prussian army a devotion on the part of the nobles, perhaps too exclusive, to the idea of a State. It was first in the army of the Hohenzollerns that the idea penetrated into the minds of both officers and soldiers, that a man owed his life to his father-land. In no part of Germany have brave soldiers been wanting to die for their banner; but the merit of the Hohenzollerns, the rough, reckless leaders of a wild army, was, that while they themselves lived, worked and did good and evil for their State, with unbounded devotion, they also knew how to give to their army, besides respect for their flag, a patriotic feeling of duty. From the school of Frederic William I. sprang forth the army with which Frederic II. won his battles, which made the Prussian State of the last century the most terrible power in Europe, and by its blood and its victories excited in the whole nation the enthusiastic feeling that within the German frontiers was a fatherland, of which every individual might be proud, and to struggle and to die for which would bring the highest honour and the highest fame to every child of the country.